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The Undocumented Student Educational Equity Project is a collaborative effort initiated by undocumented and allied undergraduate students with undocumented and allied graduate students and faculty at UC Irvine. This website is dedicated to publicly sharing our findings with the hope of fostering more equatable educational experiences for undocumented students.

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Undocumented students are at the head of a vibrant and successful movement to promote awareness and demand institutional resources to support educational equity regardless of immigration status. This project aims to help support this movement through academically rigorous data that will can inform stakeholders on how to best provide resource that meet the needs of undocumented students.

California universities host some of the largest populations of undocumented students and offer some of the most comprehensive resources to their undocumented student communities. However, there are large variations in how resources are being provided across campuses. Further, undocumented students still struggle to access resources and experience marginalization on college campuses. Knowing this, we set out to assess current gaps in undocumented student resources and experiences and identify ‘best practices’ to fill these needs.

Although our interest in studying the UC campus was based in wanting to make research-based claims for change on our own campus, we are committed to identifying needs, resources, and best-practices that can be implemented at colleges and universities across California and the nation.

The first wave of the project, launched in October 2015, assessed the University of California (UC) system. The second wave, launched in October 206, is focused on the California State University (CSU) system.

The current student data at the UC system also revealed clear gaps in post-graduate planning and preparation, which led us to extend the study to include a survey and focus groups/interviews with undocumented college alumni from the UCs, CSUs, and private colleges in California. The goal of this is to assess post-graduate outcomes and identify ways to better support undocumented students post-graduate planning while they are enrolled in college.

We look forward to sharing the data and findings with our research partners on each campus and hope that these will help staff, faculty, and students fight for the educational equity of undocumented students.